Questions which you believe really shouldn't be open, and you'd like to see deleted eventually

Questions which aren't good in their current form, but could be good after some work

For instance, take this question. It was asked in good faith, but in a needlessly provocative manner which was bound to rile some people up. With a bit of appropriate editing - preferably by the original poster - it could be fine.

Other options could be "please provide more details/code (not enough information)" and "please edit (current wording is extremely unclear)" - perhaps those could be rolled into one, perhaps not. Either way, the OP could be notified that their question isn't likely to get the answers they want due to problems with it.

The currently flagged "please edit this because..." reasons could be visible on the question, and optionally cleared when the question was edited. Whether the question should be closed after enough flags and a long time with no input from the original poster is up for discussion.

One of the repeated complaints about the system is that it's too unkind to newbies, who might ask a question and have it closed very quickly. This would help to reduce that to some extent (although not entirely eliminate it, I'm sure).

Not 100% sure about it automatically turning into a close vote though.
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ChrisFJul 14 '09 at 10:22

1

@ChrisF: How about if you don't change your mind and the question isn't edited for a day?
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Bill the LizardJul 14 '09 at 11:57

That's why I said I wasn't sure rather than saying I disagreed with that bit ;) There's two levels of flagging (as indicated by Jon in the original question) - 1) Tidy this up or it gets closed. 2) This could do with a clean up. I'm not sure having two more flagging options would be a good idea so having the half way house of "tidy this or it gets closed" is the best compromise.
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ChrisFJul 14 '09 at 17:52

I see a "needs attention" as a borderline close vote giving the author the opportunity to fix it up hence lapsing to a close vote.
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cletusJul 14 '09 at 21:04

I'd probably suggest that the number of votes cast for each flag is just displayed... no weighting needed for that. As for deciding when enough details have been added - when you commit the edit, the system could ask the editor whether this should "clear" the flags or not. If they choose to clear it when actually they haven't improved anything - and do it several times - that suggests there's little hope, and the question should be closed.
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Jon SkeetJul 14 '09 at 9:37

I find downvoting without leaving a reason problematic. If I can't figure out why people downvoted, what's the point of downvoting.
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Tony_HenrichAug 25 '10 at 6:26

Allowing flagged questions to be automatically closed if they're not edited within, say, a day... sounds like a great way to keep the site clear of cruft without unduly confusing new users.

I'd also suggest that a list of currently-flagged questions be made available to those with editing privileges, so that they could potentially step in and fix issues that the author was unable or unwilling to fix.

FWIW, i think closing should still be the first choice for blatantly argumentative questions; flame-bait should be discouraged.

This seems to be a good idea. I would add some window of time the question cannot be closed after it was flagged for edit to give the original poster some time to react. I thought about the flag turning into a close vote after some waiting period, if no edit occured. But this would disallow to use the flag in cases where the questions is valuable in its current state as well. It suffices if after a lay period the flag looses its power to prevent from closing the question, I guess.